Why are the Taxpayers’ Alliance so quiet about Cameron’s £700k refurbishment?

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

The Taxpayers’ Allaince exists to “To give taxpayers a voice in the corridors of power”, and promise, according to their own website, to “criticise all examples of wasteful and unnecessary spending”. That’s very laudible and they’re certainly very thorough. In the past week they have reported on a “traffic trap” in Bath, they have ‘uncovered’ private healthcare costs at the BBC, and railed against councils who “splash-out” on awaydays.

Yet there is one major item of public expenditure on which they have been uncharacteristically quiet – the Prime Minister’s £700k upgrade to Downing Street at the public’s expense.

Normally this is the kind of issue the TPA would be more than happy to cover. Yet there’s nothing on their website or their Twitter feed about this. In fact it doesn’t seem like there’s any coverage of their reaction.

Tom Miller suggested on Twitter yesterday that it was unusual for the TPA not to comment, and this morning I received a reply from their campaign director Emma Boon, who argued:

“Er, you might want to check my Twitter stream. Just because no quote in papers doesn’t mean we haven’t commented!”

That would be Boon’s own Twitter stream though, not the Taxpayers’ Alliance Twitter stream. Boon is careful to state in her Twitter bio that:

“Views here are my own, not the TPA’s”

So if anyone wants to know the views of the Taxpayers’ Alliance on a major piece of vanity spending from the PM, should they look at their website? Or perhaps their official Twitter feed? No – we should look at the personal Twitter feed of their campaign director (whose views are her own, not those of her organisation).

Well now we know where to look, we’ll expect further “examples of wasteful and unnecessary spending” to be buried there, rather than on their website where anyone might stumble across it. We’re sure that would still be the case if Labour were in power too…

Update: Minutes after this was posted, the official TPA Twitter feed finally commented on Cameron’s refurbishment:

“Downing Street spending excessive, DC should have kept costs down given spending cuts”

It’s good to know they’re reading…